FORUM TO SET STAGE FOR ANTI-DRUG GROUP

Tinker Cooper relives her son's drug overdose death day after day, even
watching details about it in a video.

She will relive it again Thursday night in a forum at the Corner Drugstore
in Gainesville to help Gainesville residents form a chapter of Families
Against Drugs.

The meeting is open to the public, and its aim is to raise awareness among
families about drug use and places where help is available.

"I try to get out to the parents what the drugs look like, the
paraphernalia, the lingo," Cooper said. "If parents saw a Vick's inhaler on
the kid's dresser, they would think the kid had a stuffy nose. They would
never put that together with the drug ecstasy. If their kids were talking
about going rolling that night, the parents would probably think they are
talking about Rollerblading. Parents don't understand the lingo of today's
drugs."

People who use ecstasy often call it rolling. The drug heightens the
senses, and inhalers sometimes are used for added.

Cooper is a former Orange County teacher whose son, Joe Stephens, died in
1996 in Orlando from GHB. It's a drug that is not uncommon in Gainesville,
where it contributed last year to the death of a Santa Fe Community College
student and is believed to be used in many cases of drug rape.

Bringing Cooper to Gainesville is Nora Gibbons, whose daughter jumped into
the Gainesville rave scene, where ecstasy is a staple.

Gibbons is forming a local chapter of Families Against Drugs.

"It will provide a much more sophisticated information pool than what there
has been. It networks you out so that you can get more funding for
programs," Gibbons said. "There wasn't a group like this when I needed
help. I was day-by-day struggling through this darkness, not knowing what
help was available or where to go."

The organization also presses for tougher penalties for drug dealers,
expanded rehabilitation programs for inmates and more money for treatment.

Cooper will speak and show a video called "Overdose: End of the Party." The
video was made by Cooper, two other parents and the Orange County Sheriff's
Office. It includes footage of several young people who died from drug
overdoses, including Cooper's son.

Larry Condra, a Corner Drugstore addiction counselor, said middle-class
families often have a difficult time believing their children are using drugs.

"The club drug scene is pretty much middle-class Caucasian kids. People
always seem shocked that you have these middle-class kids going to school
involved with drugs," Condra said. "Things happen in a community -- someone
overdoses, someone dies -- and a lot of people think it is someone else's
problem. We ignore things until something tragic happens."

The forum will be Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Corner Drugstore at 1218
NW 6th St.